Chef shuffle: High-end Wichita restaurants get new bosses in their kitchen
Wichita chefs are always on the move — so much so that chef updates are required several times a year.
The latest includes news about a few longtime chefs who have taken new jobs at recognizable kitchens across the city. It also includes news about a chef retiring after nearly three decades on the job and one new-to-town chef who has arrived with years of experience.
Here’s the latest:
JORGE MORALES: Wichita is patiently waiting for the opening of KVH Chophouse — a fine-dining restaurant that’s just been built at 2926 N. Tyler. (Owner Greg Hiser said he’s aiming for early July.)
In the meantime, Hiser has hired an executive chef: Jorge Morales, who most recently worked in the kitchen at Itzcali Tapas & Tequila.
Morales left Mexico City for the United States when he was 20 and settled in Lincoln City, Oregon, before friends from home lured him to Wichita. His first job was at the short-lived west-side Piccadilly Market, where he worked as a line cook.
From there, he moved on to a job as a line cook at the original Bella Luna Cafe on East Central, then worked at the Wichita Country Club before he decided he was ready to move up. In late 2012, he was hired by Chef Marshall Roth to help him open Siena Tuscan Steakhouse in the Ambassador Hotel downtown. Next up was a job as a sous chef at DoubleTree Hilton, then he was hired to be the head chef when The Sweet Spot opened at 8448 W. Central in June 2018. He also worked as the sous chef at 6S Steakhouse during its early days.
Morales was working as head chef at Vora Restaurant European when, in 2023, the owners of Itzcali hired him to help open their restaurant and put the menu together.
He was on a break from cooking when he saw the KVH job listed, he said, and he decided to apply. He’s been working there for around two months and said he’s ready for Wichita to see what the KVH menu has in store. He’s particularly excited about a flaming tomahawk steak that will be served tableside.
The job at KVH offers him another thing he’s always craved, Morales said: flexibility.
“I can do any kind of dish,” he said. “That’s what I like — new things. Wichita needs new items. I don’t want to do the same things.”
PETER MORETTI: Few Wichita chefs have managed to build up the kind of tenure that Moretti did as executive chef at the Wichita Marriott, 9100 Corporate Hills Drive. The chef started at the hotel in July of 1995 and saw it through nearly three decades of holiday brunches, banquet caterings and restaurant transitions. But earlier this year, Moretti decided it was time to retire, and he was honored with a send-off at the hotel in April.
BEN GEORGE: Another longtime Wichita chef, George had been working as a full-time faculty member at WSU Tech’s downtown culinary school since early 2023. But he left earlier this year to take over the executive chef position at the Wichita Marriott left vacant by Moretti’s retirement. George has led kitchens all over Wichita over the past two decades. He was the executive chef at Intrust Bank Arena for eight years, and his resume also includes stints at Siena Tuscan Steakhouse and Tallgrass Country Club.
George said that he’d had his eye on the job for some time and that Moretti had even asked George a few years back if he’d be interested in the job when he retired. When George was a student in Johnson County Community College’s culinary program, he even apprenticed at the Overland Park Marriott.
“When I moved here 19 years ago, I always told myself, ‘If Peter ever leaves that job, I want to get it,’” George said, adding that the hotel will soon be making changes to its dining options, including adding a new small plates restaurant.
WAYD LOVAAS: After James McBride left Siena Tuscan Steakhouse, the restaurant was without an executive chef for about eight months. Then, earlier this year, the hotel hired Minnesota native Lovaas, who most recently worked as the head chef at the Beach House Resort in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Lovaas said he wanted to get back into fine dining so was interested when the Wichita job came up — even though he’d previously only driven through Kansas.
His resume includes several hotel and resort jobs. Lovaas held chef positions at places like Chateau on the Lake Resort Spa & Convention Center in Branson, Missouri, and at Cragun’s Resort in Brainerd, Minnesota. His first culinary job was at age 8, when he helped his grandmother flip burgers and pancakes on her food truck.
His focus since moving to Wichita has been redoing the restaurant’s menus and re-branding Siena as more of a steakhouse than an Italian restaurant. Though Siena will continue to make its own pasta, it will take on more of a steakhouse approach, where people order their steaks then choose toppings and sides a la carte. Siena also will begin getting its steak from the high-end Four Sixes Ranch in Texas, and sometime this fall, the dining room and kitchen also will get a refresh, he said.
VICTOR HERNANDEZ: Hernandez had been working for years under executive chef O.J. Moore at YaYa’s Eurobistro, but when Moore left the job earlier this year, owner Ty Issa needed a replacement.
Issa said that the staff loved Hernandez and overwhelmingly said they’d like to work for him. So Issa promoted him to the head job.
“How do you know someone is good?” Issa said. “The staff likes them.”
ANGEL SANTANA GONZALEZ: This 28-year-old chef got his start at McDonald’s, but over the years, he’s risen up the ranks and now the head chef at Abode Bistro & Bar, a fine-dining restaurant/bar and grill that recently opened at 837 N. Andover Road. Gonzalez took over the position after the restaurant’s original chef, Bruno Golac, left just before the restaurant opened.
Gonzalez’s resume includes stints at the Old Town Warren movie theater, AVI, Scotch & Sirloin and Siena Tuscan Steakhouse, where he worked when Josh Rathbun was in charge. Gonzalez was furloughed from that job during the pandemic but was then hired by Yokahama owner Jack Fukuda. He also worked at Prost and at Reverie Coffee Roasters before landing a position at Odd Fellow Hall, where he’d been working for the past two years. Odd Fellow Hall’s managing partner. William Cody Lonergan. helped Abode owner Daniel Mariotti design and launch the new Andover restaurant.
This story was originally published June 10, 2025 at 5:02 AM.
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